Why being paid for creative work should not be pie in the sky

I may mutter and roll eyes at my inbox regularly but taking to my keyboard to complain I should probably do more often.

Twice in the past 24 hours commercial brands have asked to republish my content (recipes and prose) within their Facebook apps. Both claim they have “no budget” for these projects.

We have “no budget”

Brands often tell bloggers they have “no budget”. But brands invest heavily in their Facebook presence. They have a budget, they’re just being picky who they spend it on. Facebook is a difficult platform for brands to get traction on and even smaller brands are likely to have budget to accommodate this. Big fat brands on the other hand? No way do they not have budget for Facebook.

Now I have a line in my personal blogging sand. If a brand wants to give me samples of their product in the hope I’ll promote it on my own platform that’s one thing. Assuming the product is relevant to my audience and/or the brand makes it worth my while I am often happy to do this.

But say the same brand wants me to provide creative material to publish on their own platforms – their website, their publicity materials, their email newsletters, their Facebook apps, whatever. My bottom line is if a commercial company wants to use my material on their stuff or to benefit them, they have to pay me*.

Everyone else is being paid…

The reason I’m annoyed here is that everyone else in this commercial project is getting paid. The software developer creating the Facebook app gets paid. The agency looking after the brand’s communications is paid (a hefty sum covering several peoples’ salaries). And in this case, the person curating the content for the brand’s Facebook app is getting paid. So doesn’t the person actually creating the pretty content that folk are reading deserve to get paid too?

I have the same view of any third party publisher who wants to publish my material without paying a decent fee for it. Why should I spend 5-6 hours creating engaging content when the person spending 10 minutes copying and pasting it into the back end of the other website gets paid but I don’t??

And what I’m going to say may sound harsh. If you are someone who persists in doing stuff for brands for free or extremely low compensation, you’re undercutting the market for everyone else. “It’s the amateurs who make it tough for professionals” as Harlan Ellison so eloquently expressed in this viral YouTube video I’ve embedded below.

I’ve not reached this conclusion the easy way. On occasion, it’s dawned on me half way through projects that whereas everyone else on the team was getting a salary or a daily freelance fee for their contribution, I was the one trying to catch a few fish biscuits.

…So why am I the only one not being paid?

A few years ago, I gave up an entire Sunday to “work with” a particular supermarket on a Christmas publicity exercise. I’d agreed to spend a day working in their premises, for their benefit and didn’t agree a fee for my time. Stupid eh? During the day it occured to me the foodie celebrity drafted in for the same event regularly benefited from paid commissions in their magazine, the magazine editor was obviously on a sizeable salary meriting working out of hours and the two home economists were definitely on a paid fee that justified them working all day on a weekend.

What did I get for donating my precious weekend family time to this multi million pound company? Not even a sodding DIY Christmas cake kit. Thus I resolved that if I were ever asked again to contribute to a commercial project where everyone else taking part was on a pay roll that I would not work without there being a tangible benefit to myself.

Not everyone has had their fish biscuit awakening.

There will be bloggers flattered by big companies who take the bait how being “featured” will bring blog traffic – which incidently, (even if you are displaying monetised ads or selling e-books etc etc) is never going to come close to converting into the market rate for your work.

Don’t fall for the “exposure” pitch

Exposure doesn’t pay the bills. Next time a PR says you’ll get lots of exposure why not point out to them that being promoted on social media instead of being paid is like their boss offering to recommend them on LinkedIn instead of getting a salary. Sure you’ll get lots of “exposure” – to other brands who see you as a sucker who’ll do stuff for free. Why would they pay you either?

Comments

Fabulous post. The exposure thing makes me laugh. “Oh we’ll RT you”, well guess what? I have far more followers than they do in the first place. Never have I got decent hits back from anything I’ve been linked to online to make it worth while.

Thanks Jules – I think the average number of hits from a Facebook app is about 10 if that. The only time I ever had a decent spike from a brand’s Facebook page was about 200 visitors from Peggy Porschen’s Facebook page and she has around 60k+ highly engaged followers. But it’s only ever a brief spike if anything at all, it’s not a reason to work for free.

Hi Sara.. that is a very insightful post and i agree with everything you say.
When i preached about it recently to a food blogger, she said she didnt mind brands using content or pics or anything from her blog as long as she gets credit for it. I thought about it and realised that initially i did the same too. I was excited when a brand wanted to use my pics on their website for a mere mention of my blog. i have no experience or background in photography and i realised i could slowly build up my portfolio this way. My question is, how do amateurs deal with this?
Please dont take this the wrong way, but i just had to ask someone and since you did a post on the same, i thought id clear it with you .

Hi Nisha, virtually every blogger goes through a phase where they’re flattered by brands to be approached and don’t realise they’re doing work which should be paid for. The first time I was contacted by a PR I gave them four recipes to publish on their facebook app in return for £25 voucher and a box full of junk. And I published three posts and ran a giveaway.

In return I got 16 page views from their Facebook page. Way to go!

Since then I’ve worked on some great projects for which the brands compensated me well. But sadly a far greater proportion think that bloggers are a cheap resource of endless free content to be mined for commercial purposes.

It’s natural to feel unsure about your material’s commercial worth at first but once you’ve got 2-3 excellent examples that display what you’re capable of you shouldn’t be afraid to charge. If you don’t have faith your work is worth paying for, no one will ever pay you for it.

I sit on both sides of the blogger | PR side of things and would never dream of asking someone to *give* their content away for free, and would certainly not give any of mind to agencies or brands either (not that anyone is likely to ask 😉 )

I’m also really shocked that you never got paid for the full day you spent with the supermarket! That’s really disgusting behaviour on their part. You wouldn’t expect a journalist to do it for free so why do brands think that it’s OK to ask bloggers to be paid nothing? The beauty of blogs is that you have the freedom to write as and when you see fit. Most bloggers are far better writers than the “press” because of this, but brands feel as if their time is worth less or that they are doing it to occupy a couple of hours and that it isn’t a serious commitment.

I had a super big brand ask to use one of my pictures on their website with a link to my site. I said okay. Then they sent me a release that said I was giving up all right to the picture and couldn’t use it any more and they could use it where ever and how ever they wanted. I told them they’d have to pay me for the picture if I was giving up all rights to it. They wrote back a short snippy note and said they’d just use someone else’s picture then. So rude!

It’s extremely rude Barbara and I think illustrative of the lack of value commercial brands have towards creative content overall and not just bloggers. A lot of companies seem to think that just because you’ve done something already you’ll let them have it for free.

Very well said Sarah – you know I share many of the same frustrations.

I regularly link to that excellent article on Decor8 – it says it all so well, especially where it points out that not working for free is supporting the whole community.

When a brand wants to use my content and claims not to have the budget I offer the compromise of letting them use one image and a brief extract and to link to me for the full content. Sadly few seem interested and move on to the next person who will fall for the exposure mantra.

It is the same with asking your followers to follow and like brands for competition entries – digital agencies charge vast amounts to do this – why on earth would I do this for free when I know that I and other bloggers can charge for it?

I hope there is a change coming – more and more brands are finding budget for bloggers – either to produce content for them, or to feature content on their sites. I hope that as a community we can all work towards a fair reward and the respect for our work.

I wish I could share your optimism that brands would find more budget for bloggers. I think it’s more likely the case that they realise more and more they can get away with not paying professionals to create stuff as they can cobble stuff together from the public and bloggers for free/very little.

The thing I find weird is that some brands pay £100 upwards, £200 isn’t unknown. I appreciate that newer sites think noone will ever pay them anything because they’ve only just started out. Newer bloggers should be aware that it’s precisely because their audience is smaller that brands think you’ll be game to work for them for free or virtually nothing.

And if you’re giving them free content for their site, it saves them just as much money whatever size your audience is so actually the “noone’s going to pay me unless I’m some big shot” really doesn’t wash at all. Good content is worth paying for – whoever created it.

I started a local blogging group and this issue was discussed. One member accepted a pittance for her weekly column for a HUGE brand in the hopes she would be rewarded down the road. Cynical me told her I thought all she was doing was solidifying that she would work for free, nothing more.

Even brands that will pay often lowball. I was offered a fee for a sponsored post that was simply not enough for the work involved; when I inquired whether they had room in the budget to pay more, they doubled the offer. Good for me right? But not everyone will ask so there are still plenty of people doing work for less than they should…all to often with those ‘hopes’ for the future.

Here is my hope for the future. No one will work for free; every blogger will find a mantra that empowers them to say no; that they will all expect to earn what they are worth. My blog is a personal extension of my life and it’s important to me to share what I do and I’ll do a bazillioin posts without any compensation in that vein. But if a big company wants me to focus on them; well then, let’s focus on what that will cost. Period. Simple enough right?

Well said Sarah. Here here! It’s seems to be an almost daily occurrence now. I had three of these emails today. No we can’t pay, but still want your work. *sigh* Hopefully changes will come soon. Bloggers are more aware now of their worth and the worth of their time.

Thanks Jac – I can get that coverage on our own sites isn’t something to be paid hard cash for (unless they want to guarantee content within it or a publication date), I get that being compensated with product can work for some people too. I have blogged stuff in return for gadgets or vouchers.

But what I object to is this assumption that bloggers would welcome their material being published elsewhere for commercial purposes when the person pasting the material into the backend of the brand’s content management system is being paid to click “publish” but the person who slogged over creating the content did so without payment.

If anyone wants to blog lots of recipes about one product after receiving £5 worth of product – I did so myself recently with the quark desserts – then that’s their business. Creating content for our own sites whilst enjoying ourselves is what this lark is all about. But if that quark brand had said to me they loved my recipes so much they wanted to republish them on their own website, my response would have been sure, but you’ll have to buy it from me.

Just because you wrote something ages ago for free doesn’t mean it has no financial value later on – our sites are a portfolio of material which if brands want to plunder they should be prepared to pay the market rate to use it.

An alternative way brands might benefit from our material at no cost that does us a small kind of favour would be to share our blogs’ facebook posts about their product on their brand’s facebook page. When a big Facebook page shares facebook posts from a smaller site’s facebook page, that smaller site’s facebook stats benefit from a big boost to the “talking about” score. (But it’s only temporary, 2-3 days tops, and doesn’t guarantee those squillions of readers actually liking the smaller facebook page.)

And yet, much of the time, brands are oddly unwilling to do this. Brands sharing our blogs’ pages on their social media accounts, is something they’re often surprisingly reluctant to do. Yet they assume we’ll do it about them all the time. There are exceptions of course but there’s a definite disparity between how much brands promote bloggers compared to how much bloggers promote brands.

Excellent post, Sarah! Please, new bloggers (and some established ones as well), don’t fall for the old “exposure” chestnut! No amount of exposure will pay the mortgage or put food on the table. It’s sort of like the woman with low self-esteem who falls for any man who tells her she’s pretty!

Heh Jean, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head that people are more motivated to do something if it makes them feel liked. I’m not sure how much being “liked” is worth if they’re paying everybody in the chain except you?

I could not agree more! Very well said, I also share the same frustrations as you and Helen. Your comment about our sites being a portfolio of work is exactly right. Our blogs evolve as we learn new skills and improve our writing and photography. We all have fun, enjoy what we do and are good at it but spent time and money on our posts – in terms of ingredients, power/gas, props, etc. Should brands want our content they should pay, if they don’t have the budget to pay for content I don’t have the budget to work for free either.

Very well put Sarah, thank you. You are absolutely right. I’ve been lured, on occasion into giving my recipes away for free and have never had anything back, not even the promised traffic. Mostly when I mention my time and payment, I never hear from the respective PR again. Even when doing reviews for low value products BUT because they fit with my blog, I’ve had grief from PRs because they don’t like the way I’ve done it – grrrr. More power to Blogger’s elbows I say and if we can all stick together, we might get somewhere.

There’s nothing wrong with reviewing a low value product if it’s of use to you at home. But it makes sense to weigh up time spent vs value. This is where a monthly round up post of smaller products is a good idea – you can still instagram/tweet/tumblr it with a time investment more appropriately matched to the value of what they’ve sent.

But if it suits you to feature it in a post/series of posts – like I did with the quark – go with it. But never be bullied by PRs into granting a full post for one titchy product because they’re trying to make you feel obliged to do so. If the quark PRs had chased me before I’d published I’d have only tweeted the stuff on principle that they were being cheeky to expect more for £5 worth of product.

Excellent post and it’s not just bloggers this applies to. I know so many people who virtually give cakes away as it’s just a hobby for them, but those of us who want to make a living are being told we’re too expensive. People should value their work and think about what effect they’re having on their wider community.

Sigh. I know exactly what you mean. A large chocolate cake can cost £25 in ingredients yet the ceiling in my area is £35 to £40 with many people not understanding why you’re so much more expensive than the £10 birthday cake in the supermarket that has a 30 day best before window.

I really enjoyed reading this and it has got me thinking. I have been blogging for almost a year now. I have on several occasions been sent baking ingredients to make something with and blog about. Is this something I should be paid for? What kind of payment is appropriate to request if so? There is no how-to guide on this for new bloggers so it is hard to know what to do.

For me the line here is whether it’s for my site or theirs. And bear in mind, when they “send baking ingredients” they generally mean cheap stuff like flour and sugar whereas the blogger has to provide their own expensive fresh stuff like butter and eggs. Gram per gram butter and eggs cost up to 10 times more than flour and butter. So I get quite annoyed by the well known baking website that offers to “send baking ingredients” to bloggers because they’re sending very little in value but getting a lot back in return. These brands prey on new bloggers knowing they’ll be “good value” because they’re flattered to be contacted.

I think you have to weigh up, for you personally whether your time and effort is worth the value of what you’re getting, how easy the post is for you to do, whether it’s something your family would be eating anyway, whether the product given genuinely saves you money you would otherwise have spent i.e. I wrote 4 posts about quark desserts after receiving £5 worth of quark because they were fast and constituted dessert in our household for a week.

But if the person contacting you is being paid, is asking you to spend time/money/effort doing something then you shouldn’t be afraid to demand something appropriate in return. And if it’s for THEIR platform, you absolutely should get something tangible out of it and accept “exposure” alone. I would say that to anyone, however long they’ve been blogging and however many people read their site. Don’t forget that even if you have tiny new audience, if your content is good you save that brand just as much money on content creation regardless.

Very well said!
I get emails occasionally from people wanting me to link up with their product or their website and so on and I always say no.
Those people who fall for the flattery and give their creative work for free or for the “exposure” are just foolish. Flattery and exposure don’t pay the bills and only lead to a queue of other people wanting it for free.

Loved this. I actually can’t wait for the next email from a brand asking me to work for free! I look back at some of the things I’ve done and I get cross because like you I’ve realised half way through that everyone’s getting paid except for me. It does make you angry but you soon wise up to it!

Thank you for this brilliant post. I used it just this morning in an e-mail and the brand finally understood as the polite drop of the jaw just didn’t work!
I would make the point to never believe there isn’t a budget for something, I’ve only learned this when I’ve been messed about by a brand and then I’ve politely said I’m off. They have then come forward with money as they have more to loose than I do!
If you really believe in something then share it with the brand, I once reviewed a brilliant product and knew that it would be in the brand’s interest to give one away because I truly loved it. They also went from saying they had no budget to back tracking when they heard my enthusiasm, it went on to be my most successful giveaway at that time. As a fairly fledgling blog this worked well for both of us. Now I am more established I don’t really care about getting page views as much as being able to pay the bills.
I do think we need to wear our hearts on our sleeves and tell it like it is to these brands as I think they think we a bored kept housewives just looking to fill our time with a fun hobby. In this economic climate I don’t imagine there are many of those out there. I told a brand the other day that doing a competition in exchange for gadgets etc was all well and good but I actually needed to eat as well and offered them Twitter/Facebook followers for a fee like I always do. It went quiet for a week and I presumed I’d upset them but wasn’t going to get upset even though their last competition had sky rocketed my page views. Like it says in the video, this didn’t pay my bills! They finally came back to me and agreed to pay the fee for followers which I think is a brilliant deal since I have more followers than they do! So from now on instead of timidly throwing in the line about a fee for followers I’m going to stress the point more because at the end of the day it is a win/win situation.
I would also say to anyone flattered by a PR suddenly telling you it would be good exposure if you developed a recipe for their brand’s web site to run a mile. They win and you loose it’s as simple as that. I was offered this and after initially saying yes as they were providing the equpment I realised that I had to buy the ingredients and wave goodbye to my content. I quickly went back to them and said no and they completely understood. If in doubt ask another blogger and take your time to think about offers from PRs and brands.
So why should a brand pay for your services? As L’oreal would say “because you’re worth it”!

Brilliant to hear a brand paid you to grow their social media following. I bang my head on my desk everytime I see a blogger do this for free. It’s another example of being a new blogger having just as much value as an established one – those new followers for the brand are worth just as much whether you introduced them or someone else.

Great post and a great You Tube video. Think I’m going to watch that every day just to laugh. Funny guy – but oh so true. My advice would be to set a price/rate – ask for it and never go below it. Always try to better it – weather it is the value of a product you want to giveaway or content for a brand. I agree that you, or me, or any blogger out there has the discretion to feature any product they like on their site, but I think you are right – the ‘we’d love to feature your content in return for nothing’ is a slippery slope- as are blogger competitions – as I learnt recently when, before announcing the winner in a recipe competition, the PR ‘working’ for the brand emailed me asking me for my site stats. I also had an email from a company in France today offering me a couple of food items for review. In return they asked for three links AND said I would need to carry a banner advertisement on my blog. I still haven’t decided whether it merits a reply or simply a delete…

Hi Sarah, I think this a very informative useful post. From time to time brands contact me asking me to review a product which I quite enjoy, but if a brand has requested for a recipe or two, how much would you recommend as a fee for providing the recipe and content (picture)?.
Thanks

LINKS FROM THIS SITE are published or removed at my editorial discretion. Link requests alongside samples will be refused and brand mentions do not guarantee editorial links. Links where direct payment or samples are received are attributed nofollow; links may also be for brand affiliate programs. Requests to edit old links may result in material being removed completely.